Dandelions: Chapter 6 of 9
November 2045
"Listen up, people."
Dennis strode back and forth in front of the line, his CVR boots clunking dully against the tiles of the floor. He raked them with a glance, secretly approving. Although he did not care for Ulm's laxity, he was glad to see that the rest knew when to behave. Even Ulm's lover, whom he knew detested him, was staring at him with concentration in his eyes.
"As you know, we now have forty-five functioning Cyclones, each of which use a couple canisters yearly of Protoculture in order to work at optimum level. Considering the flying we do, that lifespan is sharply reduced. Furthermore, we are almost finished with completing repairs on a VAF-8R Shadow Alpha, which requires far more. If we're going to move it, it needs to be fueled. In short, Elms, we're running out, and don't have any replacements for our stockpiles.
"Even though we use fusion if we can help it, in some cases it can't equal protoculture in function and manuverability. And frankly, people, I'd rather run the risk of more Invid detecting us rather the risk of any one of you getting killed because we have no protoculture to spare. Ergo, we need to get more. And the only feasible way to do this is hit a farm."
Mutters arose. Sternly, he said, "Look, your first CO agrees with me on this. The Invid are cracking down. We can't risk signs of trade among other groups or towns without attracting unfriendly attention. The Apocalypse Riders, for instance, has its hands full with the Invid as it is. Whoever organized the strike against Rantoul is a sore loser. Plus, the Riders and the other resistance bands need what they have. So the trick is bring the fun back to the Invid." Off to the side, he felt rather than saw Ulm's nod.
"That's fucking crazy," a newcomer said softly. Agreement backed him up.
"It's been done before," Malcolm pointed out. "You just weren't there when it happened."
"Okay," Sherry said, "How does the plan go, Dennis?" She looked almost ridiculously small in her oversize armor, as though playing dress-up in her mother's things. There was nothing childlike about the hard resolve in the black almond eyes. She ruffled her now green-and-indigo locks, her numerous earrings chiming gently. "Like the last time, the speedy guys--meaning me, Harmon, Elizabeth, and damn-all everyone else you can think of--providing air support and recon while the muscle nabs it?"
Zinnert gave a reluctant nod. "And the sharpshooters providing cover for the power." It was the only way he could think of maximizing Rutherford's ...extraordinary talents in that area. "There's more, but yes, that is the gist of it." Doi's nostrils flared, the little gold ankh-stud catching light as she did so.
"So what's the farm in mind, Dennis?" Rutherford asked in her honeyed Kentuckian drawl. "I do hope you got in mind somethin' far away enough the bugs don't know where to look for the swatters."
"Glad you asked that, Rutherford," The blinding smile she turned on him left him trying to collect his thoughts for a second. He put it away, albeit reluctantly; a career REF officer had no time for that. He looked over to Matthew. Ulm nodded, and threw the switch.
The holographic countour map flared into life, then established itself as a representation of the surrounding terrain. One white asterisk began to flash. "This is where we are." Secondary lights began to come to life. "These are either surrounding towns or known resistance bases--the latter are the stars." Now, sullen red lights began to sprout. "And these are the known Invid outposts."
Ulm took over. "You all know our little friend here." He gestured to one red mote. Mumbles arose; it was the hive strongly suspected of providing the troops for the Rantoul hit. "And this one," moving east and north. This blot was larger, believed to be a controlling hive. White lights began to flash; keen minds could make out that a rough circle of white flashers extended from around the red marker. "And these are towns known to have been attacked or taken by the Invid." . A similar, but slightly smaller affected radius was flashing around another major hive across the blue band that was the Missisippi. Both came frightfully close to their site; only a few towns, to the south and west, remained steady. "This doesn't have much to bear on our next mission, I suppose, except as an illustration of how desperately we need fuel and how close we are to being hit." He moved in front of the holo-map, carrying a pointer. It traced downward, away from the blinking areas. Eventually, it came to rest approximately a hundred and fifty miles away toward the south-southwest, on a red star.
"We're going away from those spheres, since if we keep hitting those aggressors, they're eventually bound to put two and two together. The information we're gotten indicates that different areas seem to have different MO's, which indicates that the command's not as unified as it was during the last occupation, but that also there is a unified leadership of whatever sort controlling within whatever sector you choose. It also means that we make better not make ourselves too familiar to whatever's running things in either of those spheres, or it'll increase interest. However, if it's a different area, it's not as high a risk."
"Depending, of course, how you rate 'high'," Fred said. Dennis made a face and concurred.
"Yes. Well, whatever's in that area hasn't been as hot on enslaving civilians, maybe because whatever it is doesn't really need it, since the resources are already there. The other reason we're interested there being that that particular area is unusually high in Flower concentration. And where Flowers of Life are, protoculture farms aren't far behind. This thing," a gesture at the sourthern dot, "appears to be one, and it's going to be the one we target. Any volunteers?"
No hands came up. All of them seemed to have gotten down the first rule of recruitment down pat. Zinnert sighed to himself, taking out the list he had prepared in case. He could feel Ulm grinning ruefully off to the side, which chafed.
How was it that the man could prompt ready devotion when his idea of command was a shambles, while he himself only got reluctant compliance? Zinnert was yet again staggered by it. He had traveled half a dozen worlds and yet could not understand the sullenness he received when faced with his own people.
"Okay, well then, if you're so eager to offer your services, I'll tell you where you need to be assigned. Acheson, Elwin, heavy backup 2; Altman, Malcolm, heavy backup 1; Ballard, Krystal, light backup 1..."
oooooooooooooooooooo
Shiroikiku bounced along the trail at a (for her) slow clip, savoring the feeling of the Battler undernath her. She had recently been upgraded to the new mecha due to her capabilities and was enjoying every second of it. It meant that she could kick alien rear even more effectively than before. With a kill rating that was in the top five, this only boded good things.
"Hey, Doi!"
"Yeah?"
"How much further, you reckon?" Gwen asked. Her blazing hair added color to the bland monochrome of the late fall, counterpoint to the dull greens and tans of the mecha they were riding. It streamed out from underneath her helmet like a banner into the wind.
"Unh. I think Matt's gonna let us within twenty or so miles of the farm, then we're gonna stop for the night, and hit it tomorrow morning. Do it well rested. I think we're almost there now. 'Course since I was raised thinking kilometers my sense of measurement's fucked."
"Hhm. I'm gonna hafta cover you, you know."
"While I kick bug ass. I got no worries, Gwen." The other woman chuckled, full aware of her prowess. Sherry grinned, aware of her own. Then the grin melted away. "'Bout myself anyway."
"Huh?"
Shit, she'd let it slip. "Well, I can damn well cover myself. It's the other people I--" Well, hell, it was almost a given one or two would not be here to see the day after tomorrow, at least not intact. But...
"Ah, don't worry, Malcolm'll be fine."
"Huhn. Always that anni disc out there with your name written on it." She had been a child of the military long enough not to raise foolish hopes.
Besides, despite the seeming casualness of her relationship with Malcolm Altman, she truly cared about him with a depth she was often frightened by. No matter if you got killed, but if someone you were close to got it a bit of you died with them, leaving the rest of you to feel all the pain. That was the worse fate.
Gwndolyn grunted. "You telling me, hon." She said no more, trapped in whatever thoughts swam through her own mind.
Yeah, Doi thought, as the Battler thudded its shock-shattering way along the overgrown, rubble-filled trail south. No shit she knows. Unlike me, she knows up close and personal what happens in an Invid hive and has the nightmares to prove it. She's got lots to think about all right.
However, she had plenty of company with her own.
Ha, just think what my parents would think if they knew I was shacking with someone like Malcolm, she sniffed. Bad enough they had cats when I didn't stick to a nice little desk job and trucked off to Reflex Point with the Jupiter instead. Damned glad there's a sweet few dozen light years between here and Tirol. Place always did remind me of a bad set from Ben-Hur. And you think I could be a sweet little addition to their wishful dreams of "getting back to their roots" in that place? Shichisei my banana butt I will, yeah, and Zentraedi have pituitary problems.
At least if I get my ass wiped here by the crabs I won't get gravel raked over me, a headstone with kanji, and their saying prayers to Shiroikiku Evelyn Doi's spirit in Japanese every so often. Badly. Mispronounced. The Tokugawa shogunate would shit bricks. Hell's preferable to that.
Not to mention the slight possibility of their darlin' little White Crysanthemum having a kid that half-won't be Nipponese.
God, my grandparents should have married Anglos or Spaniards or Zentraedi or God knows what before they produced my parents. That would have put a break on badly done ethnic searches right off. Man, I may not be on that sort of kick but at least I know when it ain't being done well.
At least Malcolm's never tried to make me into something else I ain't. Pity my parents will see only the melanin ratios. What a dumbfuck thing to think about when you're on another planet with a whole bunch of people whose closest relation to you is a couple tens of milennia back at the least.
If they'd been the ones to splash through the shit getting shot at by bugs, they might've seen how stupid the deal is. Corpses are corpses. Down here I've seen enough of them and the way they got that way to know all the innards tend to be the same. Her hands clamped down on the unfamilliar handle grips, hard.
You didn't think about it. Some parts were okay to remember, but after a while some...you just stuck them back there and didn't bring up.
And you sure as hell hoped that nobody you'd lived with would end up in one of them.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Matthew Ulm, former Second Lieutenant of the Southern Cross, was otherwise occupied.
"Dennis, once we settle down, we have to get a look at the situation, then finalize plans for tomorrow. You got the records from the last time we had to go on a recovery trip?"
The Battler off to his side made a grunt of confirmation. "Of course I do. And we do need to look. Depending on how things are is going to determine our approach." Privately, Dennis hoped that no civillians were being held as slaves. It made things--complicated, and with their own force probably not near that manning the farm numbers-wise... Innocents were not something he cherished putting at risk. "The first scout made his records available." Dennis paused; Matthew steeled himself, knowing what question was coming next. "So why isn't O'Shea on this trip?"
Matthew paused; likely any way he phrased it Dennis might interpret it as favoritism. "Basically because we've got others trained by him in the fine art of sneaking around. Furthermore, I can't deploy every experienced Elm on this trip. If..." we get wiped out, he added silently, "he's got to keep things in line back home, as will Miranda. I thought that was our arrangement at any rate." He made a half-grunt, half-rueful laugh. "He wasn't happy about it, if it makes you feel better."
Damn right he wasn't. Although he knew he had to play Fuzz/ Bug-Buster for Base One, the rogue Invid was still refusing to talk to Ulm as they had left.
"If I get back," Ulm said in the now, "he's not going to be talking to me for a week at least. I hardly call that favoring him." Gee, I wonder why he didn't ask about Miranda's status, he thought with slight sarcasm.
"You say if." Dennis commented.
"Always that chance. You know that."
"Well." Dennis seemed to leave it at that, and concentrate on the matter at hand. "According to what I remember of the map, we ought to get near it in another hour, barring any surprises. Ten miles should be sufficient. We'll keep it on hidey-hole setting--" Elms slang for a vigilant nightwatch and camping setup that was ready to move at any notice, "get scout reports, and then, giving favorable conditions, move before dawn."
"And with luck, we'll be able to infiltrate the place and get the goodies we need without too much trouble. Right."
Dennis sighed. "But as we both know by now, like you said, there's always that chance."
oooooooooooooooooooo
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYAAAAAAA!!!!!!"
Matthew bolted upright in his bedroll, disoriented in the darkness. The scream repeated as he was out and running toward the source, barely missing the fire in the pursuit. His skin was clammy in direct reaction to a sound that was wringing out every nerve he had.
"What is it?"
He finally saw something; a new recruit hanging on to a struggling figure in a bedroll that was shrieking still, but lessening. He managed to get enough light to see the red hair of the person.
"Gwen, what is--" She had awakened and calmed down enough so that there was no more screaming, although by now half the company hunched together in the rocky little defile was awake.
She sobbed something like "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean--" as he knelt down, his feet freezing in the cold, and took hold of her shoulders.
"It's all right Gwen, it's all right."
"The fuckin' bugs are probably gonna--"
"Hardly, Gwen." This was not the first time Gwen had awakened like this, but it was the first time in the field and certainly one of the most intense. Memories left their mark. "Night critters, they're going to think it is. Easy, easy, you're among us. You're safe."
The redhead, although she was still panting and shaking from whatever nightmare had taken her, was beginning to reassume her usual insouciant oh-it's-nothing-I-meant-to-do-that attitude. "Well, there goes our nightie hours, folks. Sorry." Ulm snorted below her hearing.
Fred was fairly unsympathetic. "Nice of you to play alarm clock."
Ulm sighed further at the insinuation. "Let's not get into the my-pain-is-bgger-than-yours, Bohms. Gwen--will you be all right now? I have medications."
"No. No medications. I'll be fine." The sharpshooter was resolute in refusing any further consolation, so Ulm wearily rose and encountered Zinnert, who had been manning watch.
"You sure we should take her in? She seems a bit unstable at the moment."
"I take it you've never been held prisoner in an Invid hive, Lieutenant?"
Zinnert's mouth tightened. "No, but--"
"Please, don't presume. Some of these people have much more intimate vendettas with the Invid than you or I can ever imagine. Remember Gwen's one of them."
Zinnert still looked stiff with offense--no surprise there. Six years of knowing him meant that usually it wore off. Matt was embarrassed for reminding him that after all this time he was still the outsider. "Will Rutherford be all right?"
"She knows she has to be. I'll keep an eye on her, Dennis. I'm supposed to be the people person and you the strategic type, right?" Dennis relaxed and rewarded him with a half-smile.
"Right. Thanks for the reminder, Ulm."
"Anytime." Ulm leaned in. "One of these days...you're going to be the useful one. I'm just an old fart that looks competent."
Dennis grinned, pained. "One of these days, old man, you're going to realize they think I'm a stratified idiot from Tirol who still doesn't know the ropes. And that I believe them."
Ulm sighed, gripped his arm, and left in order to get what sleep he could.
Over in another bedroll, Fred Bohms hunched, thinking resentfully, It's not that my pain is bigger than hers, Lieutenant. It's that she thinks her pain is the only one there is.
Elsewherel, Amanda Pierson held herself and quivered, incapable of returning to sleep. Gwendolyn's shriek had not caused the sweat that turned her bangs to the color of wet straw. In fact it had broken it, for Amanda herself had been mired in nightmare. Unlike Gwen, no one knew.
oooooooooooooooooooo
"There it is. In all its ugly glory." Malcolm drawled this with seeming unconcern, then passed the night-vision binoculars to Amanda. She looked and drew in a breath.
A half-mile away, through the last fifty yards of trees, she could make out open land. Beyond it, in the distance, she could make out the faint ghost-shimmer of some sort of energy barrier. From her quick surveyal of the area yesterday afternoon (Kevin had been a thorough instructor), beyond it lay the extruded-looking outbuildings of the protoculture farm.
A massive figure tromped its path around the outer barrier, the clawed feet of the Combat Trooper piercing and rutting the stiff soil as it did so. She already had an idea of how often such patrols were.
It was the intervening distance between the barrier and the scrawny trees that caused her to wrinkle her eyes.
"Is it me," she whispered, "Or--"
"It's not you," Malcolm said. "Those little stinkers're worse'n crocuses. I've seen them blooming in mid-January."
Amanda shook her head, amazed despite herself. "Still. I've never seen so many even in summer before."
"And you don't want to, kid. When you go in, you're gonna need a mask, because if they're sporing, one snort you'll be seeing green bunny rabbits for the rest of the day. Not what you're gonna want."
Amanda eyed the pale spread of three-petaled flowers before returning the viewer to Malcolm. She wiped her hands on her pants for the seventh time that hour.
"Well, you're going to want to wish me luck." Malcolm looked solemn as she said this. "I hope I can get away with it."
"Me too. I'd go, but--"
"You're too big to be all that sneaky. And I hope to God there's no captives inside." She paused, a tremble in her voice. "Just make sure I can get out, please."
"Glad to oblige."
oooooooooooooooooooo
What a disgrace this place is.
Not only does he have the gall to send me to this Motherforsaken Unaligned farm, he also apparently hasn't recently seen how it's been run. And he thinks that this place isn't producing enough.
Even I can see why!
The slender, chitin-armored figure stepped out of the outpost hive entrance and fretfully began to circumnavigate the perimeter of the building. She had been unable to sleep after having awakened as she had lain on the pallet placed in the commander's chamber for her convenience. Besides, dawn would soon make any attempts moot. Already, the sky was beginning to gain a pearly texture to the east.
Although the sharp breeze through her long pale hair was refreshing in its way, Oryo'i sighed and placed the helmet on her head, pushing the hair up underneath. One had to keep up appearance when dealing with one's inferiors.
She watched the Malar change their shifts, the night patrol replaced by the morning. The Torabs and Iigai out on the perimeter did not change their unceasing rounds. It was only the Malarosm and above that seemed to need a respite from higher thought activity. She continued her pace around the hive, glaring through the helmet iris at the outposts and shipping buildings. One particularly makeshift contruction caught her eye and she plummeted into even deeper grimness.
Only our kind can work here, he says? Only a few humans left to harvest the fields here? He is just as blindly spiteful toward them as toward me! Humans cannot be exposed to Flower spores without protection. No wonder the majority of the workers that came here died or went mad after a few lunar cycles. But Shkud doesn't care.
How amusing. We actually have something in common. Shkud's spite. Was he like this before, after the Ascension and before he became Kulagi? Such a while--I don't think I remember. A true pity he is currently reponsible for this area. Asaav seems to have given up on it.
Fortunately after I get this particular shipment of plants and opredti readied for transport to the orbital hives I can leave. But I had better be certain to do a prolific shipment of it. I have no wish for any more of "my lord's" frustrations directed at me...
oooooooooooooooooooo
On the other side of the hive, away from observation, a figure wriggled belly-down through the chilly foliage. By all rights it was cold enough to freeze the Flowers of Life, but neither frost nor browning marred the pink petals and green leaves of the plants. Amanda was very grateful that they were high enough to obscure her progress in the predawn twilight.
An overripe red fruit, about the size of a tomato, fell off a plant and collided with the ground in a splat. Amanda froze. Five minutes later, she moved again, her heart still thundering along.
"You know the drill, Pierson," Dennis had told her. "Get into position. Then wait."
Amanda was hoping fervently that the other ruffling trails in the fields were out there. She would be severely embarassed if she were the only one ready to sneak in past the perimeter once things started to happen.
She patted her backpack. Good. All of her presents for the Invid were ready. And once empty, it could carry enough protoculture for several Cyclones.
Her nose itched terribly, but she was afraid to scratch it and perhaps break the seal her mask had with her skin. It was only a simple cloth arrangement, but it seemed to work given the continuing lack of hallucinations she was failing to experience. Within twenty minutes, according to the several years of scouting notes in Kevin's neat hand, the barrier would fall in order to let the Enforcers and Sentinels out for harvesting work, and she had to be ready to dash the second the decoy began. She hoped in the meantime the track of movement she and the others had made hadn't been seen from the air by the Attack Scouts sweeping the area.
There was a yelp. Amanda choked and realized it wasn not a human sound. The yapping began again, and her eyes flitted frantically around, incapable of looking behind herself and seeing nothing. Whatever the thing was, it was barking its fool head off. Was it some sort of feral chihuahua?
Amanda craned her eyes around as far as they would go in their sockets, trying to avoid moving her head. Her eyes popped as she heard a rasping, vigorous pant dashing around her. Then the yelping began again.
Ohshit what if the noise attracts them? she thought in terror. She would have thrown something at the source but she could not risk any extraneous movement.
I'm nice, really I am, I'm not meaning any harm. Just shut up, you little monster! Then she almost shrieked.
Something was walking up her leg, snuffling. Eyes closed and shaking, she supposed it was better than the prior barking. Suddenly, the weight dropped off, still panting away, circling around her. White fluff caught her eye as the thing got within the range of her vision.
Chihuahua my ass, she thought dazedly. Did somebody's pet get loose? The fuzzy entity danced up fearlessly in front of her and sat, red tongue vibrating in overdrive with its pants. It regarded her, then began to scratch with a hind leg.
This is not happening. If I didn't know better, I'd say I was being scoped out by this thing. This is not happening. Unmoving, she watched it watch her, aware that time was ticking down and she wasn't quite in position yet.
Finally, the dog got up, sniffled her gloved hand, and licked it. Then it was gone in the mini-forest of flower stalks.
Those weren't horns there? Nah, just a figment of my imagination. Dogs don't have horns.
As the final minutes passed to zero hour, she wriggled a few yards closer to the barrier, narrowing the distance she would need to run, her hands wet in their gloves. Heart thumping, she then waited.
The sky took on a shade of pink to the east.
The energy barrier, Invid behind it and waiting for the harvest, began to flare and fade. With an eerily silent snowflake-like melt, it fragmented and disappeared.
Trembling, she watched as forty yards over to her left the monstrous, utterly inhuman armored figures began to file out.
Her muscles tensed.
Any time now.
oooooooooooooooooooo
"It's down!" Malcolm hissed.
At selected points around the periphery of the woods, hands began to move, light and ignite. Next to the solid bulk of the crouching Malcolm, Fred's saturine features, white with tension, watched as the aliens continued to file out.
When the match had almost burnt down, he lifted it to the wick.
oooooooooooooooooooo
The forest margin erupted.
The Elms lying in the fields were gifted with the fascinating sight of Enforcers doing a double take as a violent blaze of light, color, and noise threw what had been a dawn peace into bedlam.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Oryo'i's head jerked up.
What?? she said in naked confusion. The blankly anonymous faceplate of the gray and orange battlesuit robbed her of any expression, but no being could mistake the posture of shock. Then understanding leaked in.
All personnel, scramble! We are under attack! she shouted telepathically. Sod flew from under her feet as she dashed inside.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Amanda ran, legs churning for all they were worth. She was too intent on her own welfare to note the dashing silhouettes that like her, were running for the now un-guarded gate. As expected, the Invid were going after the explosives, flares, and fireworks set up as a decoy, but they had seconds at most before they were detected.
Five seconds never felt so long before, but she was inside. Hearing gasps beside her, she dove for the shadow of the nearest outbuilding, desperate to get bearings.
She hid, in the shadow of a building that looked more grown than built, behind a piling. A hand jerked her on the arm, and before she could react, she was through a door and inside the tar-blackness of the interior.
Despite herself, she gagged on the odor inside. It was indescribably awful, filled with fetor and decay. Whoever had helped her was choking as well. Surpressing it, they huddled inside, into the darkness. Outside were continuing explosions, roars of Invid jets, and occasionally human shouts.
Amanda was full aware they had to move. "Who is it?"
"Oh, it's you," Gwen's voice said, flatly.
"The last I checked," Amanda said. "We gotta go before they start looking." A grunt of confirmation, and they began to sidle around.
"Further inside. That's where...they keep it." the other woman said. The two dashed outside, around the building. Gwen and Mandy nodded at the same time, seeing a familliarly shaped composition: it matched descriptions of what they wanted. It was unguarded, thanks to the chaos outside.
"Excuse me," Amanda said, remembering. The perimeter barrier was near; she deposited and readied one of her backpack's contents. She had made it back over to Gwen before a ThooOOMP made her stumble. The fence was down.
She made to throw another grenade, but Gwen hissed, "No! What if..." Mandy stiffened, realizing what she was implying.
"If there were, wouldn't there be..." Heavy footfalls came up behind them, and both women whirled in fear only to see Matthew.
'"I thought you were..."
"No time!" he barked. The Saber suit lunged over toward the storage depot. "You two, disable what you can and see if there's any captives. I'm going to get the supplies. The rest are near the north and south entrances." The two complied.
Amanda shrieked in challenge, tossing another grenade toward the main entrance. The organic looking watchtower erupted in shards and plasma.
A soft moan could be barely heard above the background devastation. It was arising from the first building the two had hidden in.
Eyes wide, the blonde and the redhead stared at each other. With the same thought, they turned toward the interior.
oooooooooooooooooooo
As planned, Matthew met up with Sherry and her penetration squad as they neared the depot. Sherry was growling as thanks to the power of her Battler suit, she was rocketing forward as she ran. The rest were either in Battloid or in REF cold-weather uniform; the disablement squad could not have managed to get near to the base crawling in the cumbersome CVR.
Without a word, Shiroikiku and part of her armored band whirled and placed themselves at the entranceway; a few others took the point entering. Matthew carefully kept one eye on his helmet readings and another on the interior.
I want this to be a raid, not a massacre, he told himself. If anybody kind is listening from above...
As his eyes adjusted to the humid interior, he drew in a whistling breath.
Like all Invid structures, the place looked more grown than constructed. Ulm could see the expressions on some of the unarmored troops; the outright revulsion was enough indication of their idea of the aesthetics of the place. The air was warm and carried a vegetable jungle reek. The Invid still thought that the attacks were coming from outside, so it was unpoliced. It was a matter of only a few minutes before they realized that they were wrong.
In the dim light, there was the glint off smooth, curved gray surfaces in long, stacked ranks.
"Okay!" he hissed. "Move in! The second I say get out, get out." The party fell to, yanking canisters with silent, clumsy haste. The entire time, Ulm kept an ear open on the radio, waiting for the first indication from those outside that the Invid had realized the ruse.
Three minutes had passed, and there was yet no sign. Yet something...
Matthew opened his mouth, years of instinct warning him. He turned back toward the outside to check, preparing to tell those inside to retreat.
At his question: "Nah nothing. Bugs still chasing the decoy parties all over the place."
"I..." He had a feeling of Something Not Being Right. Usually, he got it just as Kevin got a strange look in his eyes that was then followed by panic.
"Okay, group, move--"
"Oh CHRIST!" someone screamed. "It's--" The voice cut off into a roar and static. Sherry gasped, and dashed inside. The rest began to follow--and then a blaze of energy melted the last stragglers into their component elements. The heat was staggering.
"Lieutenant! It's--"
Ulm was not even listening. In a single leap, he had pivoted toward the one opposing wall that did not have protoculture canisters, and with a shouted command, loosed a shoulder missile. It detonated, leaving a hole large enough to admit human bodies.
"Doi, get them out! Now!"
"Matt--"
"DO it, Corporal!" A quick, reluctant stiffen, and Sherry took the point, leading the survivors with their cargo out. As she did so, she shouted, "Matt, it's--"
He was already moving toward the first entranceway
"I know what it is, Sherry. Good luck."
A strangled gulp, and she proceeded to fight her way out.
Matt was disoriented as he made it into the sullen autumn dawn, arming his missiles. What waited for him was what he expected, but still, an icy trickle of sweat made its way down his armored back.
He saw attention being drawn for him--and leapt.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Hands slick, Gwen found the lantern and turned it on low, as the low groan sounded again.
The visual added to the olfactory input was enough to make her gorge rise.
It was, in the most basic sense of the term, a pen.
At one time it had held at least a hundred bodies. It was, like all Invid architecture, organic in look and nature, but it did not take the humans much to see that very little effort had been put into it. Pallets, encrusted with unnameable substances, were raised about two feet off the floor and seemed to be intended for sleeping. There seemed to be no toilet facilites except for a container over by a wall. Even in the November cold, the stench was overpowering.
It looked empty, but then there was movement over in the corner, on an isolated pallet.
Gwen was too possessed by past ghosts to notice, but Amanda gasped. The movement became more pronounced.
"Leave me alone...alone..." a hoarse voice rasped. "Oh leave me alone, so I can sigh and die and fry..." The cadence was in a high, childlike croon, and something aimless and empty about the chant sent daggers up the spines of both Elms.
"Who's there?" Amanda snapped in terror, her voice muffled by the mask. Backed by Gwen, she made her way over to the pallet. There was a huddled mess that looked like a bundle of rags, but it moved.
"Aliens and aliens, go and go..." the chilling singsong continued.
"We're not Invid," Amanda said. "Please, we've come to get you out."
Some recognition appeared in the blank tones. "Get me out? Are you humans?"
"Yeah." Gwen said.
A high giggle came. "Oh no human gets out oh no. You stay and you work and you lose your mind, just like me..." With an effort, the bundle unfolded itself.
Amanda stared, her face going utterly chalky white under her freckles. After a few seconds, she began to gag.
"Oh am I seeing am I seeing another ghost?" the prisoner said, something that might have been surprise crossing the empty voice. "Is it James's girl, come back to haunt me? Oh you are not Invid, you do not have the colors, you must be a ghost, nobody leaves here, not me or my baby, nobody at all..."
"Holy shit," Gwen panted, shaking like she was possessed.
The creature looked as though it might have been a hardy woman of Germanic descent in her mid-thirties, before months of privation and work had melted her into an etoliated caricature in rancid tatters and stringy mats of hair. The dark eyes in their pits of socket were not anything anyone would have called sane.
Amanda was making retching noises with no result. "Oh Jesus God, Gwen, I know her..." She was shaking.
"Shee-it," Gwen murmured. "Are there any others?"
The woman giggled, a noise with no hilarity in it. "Did some come here? Some did, and then they saw things, and then they died and now only we are left and we see things alone..."
"Mrs. Henderson!" Mandy gasped, barely coherent. "Where..."
"My baby don't wake my baby..." The clawed fingers aimlessly trailed in a direction, and Amanda saw a small figure in the corner, curled up, asleep or dead. "Are you sure you are alive? You have some of the color, just like the pale woman..." Something, coherent if not sane, for a moment glimmered in her eyes. "No! Not the pale woman, her hair like snow..." Raggedly, she began to scream in hoarse cries that were too exhausted to carry. The child in the corner stirred for a second.
"What woman?!" Gwen shouted, shaking in fear. 'Mandy, we've got to get out, the Invid are coming!"
"She's out there!" the wreck cried, purpose in her mad voice. "Run, take my baby! Their hand is on you, Amanda, I can see it! Before they crush you, run!"
"Let's do it," Gwen said, suddenly aware that far too much time had passed.
"I can't leave her! She's from my town!" Amanda snarled.
"Then you'll stay!" Gwen spat. The child did not protest as she hauled it into her arms. "And end up like her!"
"Mrs. Henderson--" Amanda began. She met a pair of eyes--eyes that seemed sane and calm.
"Amanda... You lived. Good. I am dead."
Casually, the madwoman lay back down, shifted as though going to sleep, and then went limp, her eyeballs fixed.
"God." Gwen gasped. "She's --."
Amanda stood staring, just before Gwen hauled savagely on her with her free arm.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Matthew flipped in midair, gravity nauseating him, seeing his worst nightmares step for him with plain intent.
He had expected Enforcers running the place, or even a few Strike Units, replacements for the Pincer Command Units. He had not expected, of all things, an Invid Assault Battloid at a minor farm, and that presumption had killed eight people by itself.
The Invid mecha, an affair in dark charcoal gray with vermilion trim, swiveled its sensor array, focusing on him.
It swiped its arm at him, and he barely managed to dodge before the slab of alloy whipped with enough force to crush stone. He swept back, concentrating on harrying the thing, enabling his command to get out with the materials needed to continue the Elms.
It was far larger than him, far stronger, and with a payload that dwarfed his.
This was not a fight Matthew Joseph Ulm expected to win.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Oryo'i snarled like a dog, her teeth gritted, intent on crushing this --insect, this malicious hindrance to her dignity, not even wishing to compliment it by destroying it with anything other than fist and arm. She had tried and tried beyond belief to fulfill her duty to the Invid, to a lord that would not be pleased, and this latest insult was beyond endurance.
She had waited until she had boarded her Gamun before setting the troops after the humans; any notice by them that her troops had known about their penetration would have set them off from the farm, before she could use the Gamun's weaponry to eliminate them in part, before she could see what they were trying, and before she could exact her vengance. She knew now who to destroy, first and foremost.
The rest were next on her list.
The human mecha darted around her like the fly it was. Rage boiling in her, she urged the Gamun up after it, fixed on settling the score once and for all.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Ulm could see one forearm swing towards him, plasma cannon primed. Before it discharged, he did the least likely thing; dove towards the mecha, close enough that neither cannons, missile launchers, or shoulder weaponry could focus on him. He readied his missiles.
The pilot, gifted with the human cunning of the Solugi rank, knew what he was planning and dodged out of the way; the missile Ulm loosed missing but the Assault Battloid's own targeting fix broken. It was not before the diving suit had flashed past the semi-transparent canopy and Matthew had seen what was piloting it.
The body armor the humanoids had taken to wearing rendered the pilot anonymous, but Matthew's concentration was shattered, knowing that an individual face was lurking behind the mask. There had been something about the way the suit was designed...
oooooooooooooooooooo
What?! Oryo'i barked mentally. Still reeling from her close call, she put aside vengefulness and concentrated on wiping him into free atoms. She released a missile, but the blazingly agile human mecha dodged.
I will not have you humiliate me so again!
She checked to see that the Malar were following his minions satisfactorily and then turned her attention back on him.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Sweat rolled down Ulm's face, his blood pounding in his temples, as he dashed around the hulking Invid, his mouth dry from his pants of exertion. He was forty-two years old, gods he wasn't up to doing this, any time now... He prayed in a tiny corner of his consciousness the incoherent prayers of the warrior, prayed the rest had managed to run for freedom, prayed that Kevin, the closest thing to a son he would ever have, would be able to survive in a world against him; prayed that somewhere, somehow, Kevin, the first Kevin, would have pity on his younger brother's eccentricities and would intecede for his alien namesake. And for all the Gwendolyns, all the Geralds, Freds and Amandas that his dying might save. The last of the Ulm family would die like a true Catholic martyr, he thought. Isn't that charming?
In the rest of his mind, he simply fought for the time to take another breath.
The Battloid persisted after him; apparently it was quite aware of his role, and no surprise, Ulm thought. He knew what their pilots were capable of.
Ulm pushed aside the knowledge it could have been Kevin in that mecha and fired.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Malcolm and Fred knew from experience something had gone disasterously wrong as soon as the first raiding members had arrived, loaded with canisters and reduced in numbers. As per plan, Dennis had radioed the decoys to withdraw as fast as they could, scattering so groups could not be picked out by the Invid. Although what seemed like the entire farm's personnel had gone after, from the net it was obvious the tatic was working. With the Cyclones on fusion, the Scouts and Combat troopers had to rely on visuals, and the forests of Earth had proven to be the Elms' biggest ally.
The two men were holed up behind a tree, making certain everyone had gotten out, when the last band plunged past. A Battler stopped as the rest blazed by, its carriers loaded with canisters.
"Sherry, honey, where's Matt?"
"There!" she panted. "The place is run by a Marauder--he's taking it on singlehandedly--Malcolm, you have to--Gwen and Mandy--"
Frederick's contenance was gray and shaking, his breath hissing through teeth. Wordlessly, he gunned the engine, back toward the clearing.
"Jesus! Fred! Wait!"
oooooooooooooooooooo
"Oh no--"
They emerged, seeing an eerily silent vista, before they saw the blast craters. It was Gwen, her arms loaded, whose eyes went upward and saw the two figures juking high in the air, one tiny, one massive and deadly.
"It's a Battloid! The fuckin' bugs had a sonofabitching transmute here!"
"It's Matt!" Amanda's eyes saw the fighting pattern clear as day. "Oh god, he's fighting that thing, we've got to help him!"
"We've got to get out! Come on!"
"YOU can go ahead." Unarmored, Amanda fixed stock and barrel to Gallant in two motions.
"You stupid little bitch, we've got a kid here!" The green eyes were dilated, ignorant of Gwen's screech, locked in a world perhaps the corpse back in the pen would have understood. White-faced, Amanda took aim and fired.
It failed to do anything important, except attract attention.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Two other humans? Oryo'i thought. Lazily, the arm plasma cannon reached out and blazed.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Gwen knocked Amanda down as the blast scorched and singed clothing, filling the air with the stench of hair. They rose to their feet with a bad case of sunburn but alive.
"Jesus, the Enforcers..." Gwen hissed.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Oryo'i had been distracted, but she moved to avoid the missile Matthew discharged.
Wrong, human. Not this time.
He was wide open. Chuckling, she targeted.
Then, a thud of missile detonation sent her spinning crazily.
oooooooooooooooooooo
What, I'm not dead? Matt thought distractedly.
oooooooooooooooooooo
What?!? There are more?? Oryo'i thought in shock. Torabs, back
here!
oooooooooooooooooooo
Fred was snarling as he exploded into the air, Malcolm on his heels.
"Matt, get out!" Malcolm was shouting. "The rest are okay!"
"Kill YOU!" Fred screamed in pure hate. Armor-piercers left launchers, and for the first time in the fight they found their mark; Oryo'i had to draw her attention to the shocks her armor was taking.
"Okay! " Matt shouted, and dove.
Trying to draw attention elsewhere, Gwen reached in Amanda's pack, activated a few more grenades, and let them go, just as an armored arm wrapped around her waist and she was hauled shrieking into the air, human burden and all.
Amanda lost her footing again from the detonation, just as she was unceremoniously dragged into the skies, and the world blurred into blackness.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Several hours later, through the dint of activating false leads of protoculture radiation, Matt finally deemed that they had thrown off pursuit.
"Ten dead." he said in a emotionless voice late that night. Still in his armor, he did not look up as Malcolm walked up to him. Sitting on a fallen log in the thickness of skeletal trees, he looked pasty and exhausted to sickness, his eyes hollowed out with bister and a network of crow's feet that were more pronounced now than ever marring them.
"Sixty-seven canisters taken," Malcolm reminded him softly. "Matt, you gotta stop beating yourself over it."
"If I could, Malcolm, I would." The dark bearded face above the slumped commander made a grimace of sympathy. "It's never gotten better. It gets worse. And it's my fault."
"Bullshit." Altman said flatly.
"Look, if I'd kept in mind the possibility of a Marauder running that place--"
"You wouldn't have gone in, Matt! Look, if we'd sat on our duffs playing chess, we wouldn't have gotten killed either. We wouldn't have done a damn for the resistance either. And it wouldn't have helped shit when the crab lice came for us. "
"My logic, Malcolm, says yes." Ulm wiped something away from his eyes. "My emotions are doing veto power."
"Look man, I trust you, basically because you admit you have no idea what the hell you're doing. You're just trying to do what you can." Malcolm crouched down. "In my opinion, it's ones who think they know what they're doing who don't."
"What about Henry the Fifth?" Matthew said, his mouth twitching upward a second. Malcolm snorted and ran fingers through his kinky hair.
"Ah, him, he never existed anyway. Shakepeare was a nationalist anyway. 'Randa blabs about a fictional character, not actual history."
"Agincourt was history."
"You're off the subject."
"Dennis."
"Even HE doesn't think he knows what he's doing."
"Thanks much," Zinnert said dryly as he came up in Battloid. The three men exchanged exhausted smiles as patchy clouds swirled over the hunter's moon above.
"I've been talking to the other gangs on our assigned channel frequency. All of them seem to have gotten out with a few casualties and no deaths. We'll probably be able to roundezvous in a day or so at our spot."
"Any signs of pursuit?" Ulm asked.
"Not that they could see."
"Tell them to keep an eye out. There is a humanoid running the affair."
"Even he can't be omniscient."
"She."
"Wha?" Malcolm startled.
"She. During the fight I got a look inside the mecha. The suit seemed to be a female design."
"Wonderful," Dennis sighed. Sitting, he removed his helmet and began to rake his dishwater-brown hair into spikes, face blank with exhaustion. "I checked up on the--child."
"How is she?"
"She still hasn't awakened. She occasionally shifts, but it's like a light coma. Those Flower spores... No idea what they may have done to her."
"It's obvious," Fred's voice said bitterly, out some distance. "Easily replenished resources, just take another town, enslave it. Why bother with masks? If they're going to go crazy from breathing spores, just get fresh ones."
"Point taken," Zinnert noted, sighing. "Keep your mind on watch, Fred." It had taken a hard smack on the helmet for Malcolm to break Bohms out of his suicidal berserker frenzy at the farm.
"What about Gwen and Amanda?"
"Both--" Dennis sighed. "We're going to have to put them on standby, Ulm. Not just the physical, but..."
"Don't tell me I should have known."
"I'm not. What they saw--it would have done it for me." Dennis sighed. "I'm--sorry. This isn't the kind of war I was trained for."
"Dennis?" Malcolm said mildly.
"Yes, Malcolm?"
"Shut up and leave the 20/20 hindsight for when you got the mind for it."
"Yeah. That point taken."
oooooooooooooooooooo
Oryo'i stood and watched the Malar begin to clean up the wreckage of the humans' strike. Other than a few craters, the destroyed watchtower, the downed energy fence, the gaping hole in the storage building, and a few missing canisters, there was little damage. She offered the Terrans a grudging piece of admiration for their precision.
She paced back and forth, outside her mecha, as it was waiting for repairs to the dented and cracked armor where the missiles had connected. Fortunately for her, none of them had been direct hits, but it had been just enough to keep her from pursuing the humans after they took off from the depot with their unarmored comrades.
She began to think, carefully, about what Shkud's reaction would be once he heard of the affair.
Hmm, what do you remember about piloting a Gurab, Oryo'i? The fear that should have been there was replaced by a cool, detached consideration.
For nearly nine lunar cycles now, since the fiasco near the river, nothing she had done had pleased him. In fact, it had reduced her to her current inglorious status. The humans had hardly been accomodating themselves, but at least she knew the reason for that. But to have received nothing but more and more contempt for months, from her own kind...
What had been a tatically aggressive and intelligent if quick-tempered leader a few dozen lunar cycles ago was now a vicious, spiteful being who struck if there was any hindrance and often even without, just to show he could do it to his subordinates. A move she had made nine cycles ago that he once would have thought innovative if flawed had instead given him an opening to target her over and over.
No wonder the other Solugi she had met under his command had looked at her with wide, shifting eyes when she had brought the subject up.
Pacing, pacing, she watched as under the direction of the Malar, the Gamir began to dismantle the human holding pen. Debating how to present it, Oryo'i took off her helmet in the chilly breeze, her hair whipping like corporate fog.
Suddenly, she stiffened, her breathing beginning to race. Her eyes began to dart, considering.
Not all that many canisters had been pilfered. It would be below the average for a monthly shipment, but she could blame the Flowers' production on that. The physical damage to the establishment could be repaired in a couple of days.
The lower Invid out here were permanently assigned, with little turnover and not much communication with the outside. If not asked directly about any situations, they were unlikely to make the affair known, being the literal-minded creatures they were. Even those inside the Malar preferred to give the accepted answer rather than present a new question. And Shkud heard only what he wanted to hear.
And communication was invariably with the highest-ranking member of any given hive.
And the humans? Interesting, most interesting. Something about the way they attacked... And had not Shkud said once, that she would have her opportunity finding out why they had done what they had done? Why not take him up on his word? After all, it had gone far beyond adversary to adversary now. It was most personal on her part.
She continued to think, and then looked up.
The amber-orange eyes narrowed, and a secret, chilling smile curved her lips.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Miranda dealt in a card, her face blank with concentration, chin resting on her hand. The guerrilla next down looked at it.
"Nasty," he commented admiringly.
"You betcha. Pay up." With grumbles, the rest around the table watched as she smugly raked in her loot and began to eat it. A stereo was softly playing Miles Davis in the background.
"Those were my carrots," whined someone.
"Sure as hell hope they weren't your lunch, kiddo. You need your vitamin A."
"What he needs is a brain transplant." A loud groan met the wisecrack. The five people around the coffee table began to deal another hand as the garage's space heater gave grudging warmth against the cold.
"Any word from comm on the others?"
"Not a peep. It's been five days now."
Miranda sighed. "Doesn't mean anything. Back at Quincy, we made the most incredible routes back to base to make sure the bugs didn't find us. Not that it helped." The casual cheer of her tone was belied by the furrow wrinkling her brow.
"I tried to grow veggies in those old tree planters," the carrotless one said. "The cats pissed on them."
"Grooosss. Remind me not to eat the radishes." a teenager said in a disgusted tone.
Miranda was in midchew, blinking.
"No, those weren't in there." She resumed munching, and shuffled her cards.
The blat of the klaxon sent two under the table, severed Miranda's carrot, and threw the other three spinning upright. Even as Miranda made the first couple of steps up the stairs, the PA came on.
"This is Paul Yau up at comm. This is not an attack, repeat, not an attack. The rest are enroute home, ETA one hour. They have wounded. All medic and mechanical personnel report in the staging area in ten minutes. Message repeats; this is not an attack warning, expedition on the way home in an hour, with casualties, medic and mechanical personnel report in staging. Connection closed."
oooooooooooooooooooo
"That's my carrot."
"It is? Sorry." Kevin finished masticating the vegetable and swallowed, shivering slightly in the cold at the entrance.
"You got it off the card table, didn't you?" Miranda asked with a preoccupied look on her face, peering in the distance. He nodded. "You have got this knack for eating my food."
"Can't deny it, I try hard to." he said abstractly. "Malcolm's alright. He's the one that sent the okay."
"Didn't say any on the others." She licked her lips. "I know my brother, and although he did a great job of hiding it, something in his voice..." She trailed off ominously. The carrot abruptly lost its taste for Kevin.
"They better not have." he said. "I'll be pissed."
"Ditto."
Inside, there were clatters, bangs, orders and curses as the others finished up triage preparations and fixing up the repair bay. The two figures outside waited in the gray chill and squinted their eyes, looking.
Soon, a trail of thin dust rose through the air. The two tensed, then shouted back to the others.
The noise increased, until a ragged band began to make their convoluted way up towards Base One. Miranda subvocalized as she counted heads, then drew in a harsh breath.
"There's--"
"Gods. Don't tell me."
In a couple of minutes, Lieutenant Ulm dismounted in front of them. Both took a look at him and stared.
"O'Shea, Altman. We're back."
"Where's the twelve back there?" Miranda asked flatly.
Ulm told her.
"I see." The tone was obvious that she didn't and didn't want to.
"Move in," Ulm told the rest. There was the hum of engines as they complied.
They followed inside.
"Matt--" Miranda licked her lips. "What happened?"
The lieutenant began to tell her in a drained, near-monotone as Kevin listened, a clamp tightening around his ribcage. Then, Ulm reached a certain part--
"Jesus God Allah Buddha!" Kevin whispered, his voice cracking. The bloodshot hazel eyes two inches below his fastened on his face in unspoken communication, and Ulm nodded. Kevin lowered his face to his knuckles.
"I think I'm going to be sick now," he said conversationally.
Miranda merely shook her head bleakly, her cornrow beads clacking together.
"I guess it was only a matter of time before we pissed one of them off."
"Running a farm you mean?" Ulm answered. "Yes. At least that's what I keep
telling myself."
"We--well, I suppose sneakiness doesn't work one time out of a hundred. We were just damned lucky out of the other 99 that it wasn't the transmutes we went up against. What one was doing at--" she trailed off. "You were lucky. Real lucky." Ulm nodded.
"I was six inches away from being number eleven. I know all about it."
"Where's that girl you picked up?"
"Over in the triage area, most likely." Matt turned and made a noise. "Where'd he go off to?"
oooooooooooooooooooo
"You," the short Hispanic medic told Fred, "are gonna have to stop playing with linebackers."
Bohms snorted, his lank blond hair hanging in his eyes as he examined the medic examine in turn a superficial burn on Bohm's muscular arm. The heat of a plasma blast had conducted itself to the affected area via the CVR armor, undersuit nonwithstanding. "Tell the linebackers that, Valdez."
Valdez sighed, knowing well though what he knew of the core member and of the situation his advice would not be taken. "Good thing it's not more than skin-agh!" He ducked as someone leaped over his head and ended up yanking on Bohms' arm doing so, forcing a curse of pain out.
The figure, clad in thick gray-and-white REF cold-weather uniform, loped through the rest of the injured being treated, dodging occasionally. Valdez noted the dark hair and shrugged before going back to the still-quivering Bohms.
Sherry was gently unloading the small malnourished figure from her Battler. "Take care of her," she said to the medics, who nodded and began to hook up a bag of their limited IV supply. Wrapped up, the child looked only five, although the deprivations of hunger could mean she was considerably older. The tiny hollowed face was prematurely aged. In fact, she had to be at least seven. Sherry remembered belatedly that every child under six in Amanda's village had been systematically murdered.
Sherry swallowed back a lump in her throat, and looked up, getting a view of Kevin's knees.
"Hey," she said. He nodded, looking down at the little girl with an ill expression.
"Who is she?"
Sherry sighed and said "Mandy said her name was Florence Henderson. Her mother was Mandy's teacher. They were..."
"I know," he said thickly. She squeezed his knee in understanding.
"Where's--"
"Mandy?" Sherry looked bleak.
"Where IS--" he began, panic cracking his voice.
"She's here," Sherry said. "But I don't think you want to see her, not right now. She and Gwen--"she shook her head. "Shit, Kev--" she said, looking up and finding nobody.
Kevin was already weaving through the crowds, his eyes on a familliar yellow head. The returnees slid past him as he zeroed in.
He grasped her shoulder. "Mandy, I--"
She looked up and he bit back a curse.
Kevin had no true conception of the human Hell, but looking into the blasted green eyes gave him his first real taste of it.
As his visual image began to register, she began to shake.
Their hand is upon you, Amanda, the voice of her dead history teacher screeched in her mind. Before they crush you, run...
"It's not me, Mandy," he whispered in desperation. "Whatever you saw, that's not me!" She stared at him, blinking and trembling like a leaf.
With an agonized decision, he took her in his arms, trying to avoid the red burns on her face. She froze, not even breathing, and then her shudders redoubled. It was seconds before he realized she was sobbing dryly.
Unnoticed by either, Gwendolyn Rutherford stared at them as antidepressants and endorphins were injected into her system, a wild, hard light growing in her amber eyes.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Fred, bandages stiffening his right arm, looked down at the small face in the dark room and absently stroked her cheek. The expression in his dark gray eyes was far gentler than most of the others would have normally seen.
"That poor little tyke," he murmured. Miranda looked down as well, having finished her periodic ministrations to the small body on the bed.
The child, although she would swallow and take water by reflex, had not awakened in the week since she had been taken from the pen in which her mother had died. She remained still, locked in whatever hallucinations the Invid Flower of Life had given her. The only changes had been the slight lessening of the deadly sunkenness of her face and slight movements and complaints on the jolting ride home.
"The only thing we can do is wait for her to come out," she said, pity crossing her tired features. "It's what usually happens in any case."
"After god knows how long breathing that?" Fred stated flatly. "Even if she does, what will she be like? Gwen told me what her mother..." He trailed off.
Miranda's mouth tightened. "I'm not about to give up."
Fred nodded. "Me neither."
Miranda sat down, gazing at the bed in the private infirmirary. "Frankly I'm surprised you... It doesn't seem like..."
Bohms stiffened. "You don't know the slightest thing about what I'm like."
Miranda sighed. "Sorry. Been up twenty hours now. I lost my courtesy about eleven tonight." Fred shrugged it off.
There was a quiet sigh from the little girl. Miranda looked over.
"Well, at least it's not as though she's in a classic vegetative state." She took a book out and began to ruffle through the pages. "Well, I don't think she'll mind..."
"Hmm?"
Miranda shrugged and with a voice hoarsened by fatigue began:
"T'was brillig and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe..."
Fred listened in to the Carroll poem with no comment. About the time Miranda got to the good part, he looked over and jumped, stopping her mid-recital. He stared.
It was dim in the room but bright enough to watch the eyelids flutter. After a minute or so, they slipped wide, revealing eyes the color of morning glories. They blinked, trying to focus.
"Hello?" Fred said quietly.
The child stared at him, her eyes wide. At last a whispery voice came out.
"You're not mommy." Fred shook his head. "You're people, not the monsters," Fred startled, then bit out,
"No, I'm NOT the monsters. You're safe. You're with good people. Florence."
Miranda had dropped her book and was bending over the girl. "Are you seeing anything strange?"
The child was confused. Finally, she said softly, "Where's the nice lady?"
"'Nice lady?'"
"There was a lady where I was. A really pretty lady." She drifted off into memory. "She had green eyes and long sparkly shiny hair." At last, tears welled up in her eyes. "She told me lots of things and hugged me. She was nice, not like the--bad place. " She trailed off. "I thought she was an angel, like in Christmas, but she didn't have wings. Where's mommy?"
The two adults stared at each other, lost.
That's one heck of a hallucination, Miranda thought to herself.
Fred looked down, but the effort of keeping awake had been too much for her. Quietly, he sidled out of the room.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Kevin sat on the upper level, a view of the parking lot spread before him throught the windows, and clasped his hands between his knees.
"Run this past me again, Matt." he asked.
Matt let out a breath. "On the way back, I managed to piece together from Amanda and Gwen what Henderson said before she died."
"Which I'm hoping were the dying rantings of a spore-crazed victim."
Matt shook his head. "Insane, yes. But it makes a weird sort of sense, Kev. The effect of spores on the human mind...well, it's not out of the question."
"Wouldn't know. I seem to be immune."
"Well, it does seem that the spores seem to activate...strange portions of the human brain. Latent PK, god knows what."
"The "colors"? Are you meaning that breathing spores that long--showed some sort of...aura...around-- You Know--to her?"
"Could be."
"Why Amanda?"
Matt stared at him. Kevin swallowed.
"That's crazy, Matthew. That's absolutely nuts. Do you mean...my contact with her, and you, left a weird psychic mark?? If that was the case, the others would have dug me out years ago from seeing you."
"Maybe, Kev. 'Some of the colors', she other Invid don't seem to notice it, maybe it's a spore addict's vision only."
"You know Matt, if I wasn' t considering going up the wall just now I'd kick you for that."
"Right. 'The pale woman,' she said. 'Her hair like snow...' Who do you think that is?"
Kevin snorted through his hands. "Obvious, isn't it, Matt? The fair damsel you tussled with and who took out almost a quarter of Ulm's Elms. By elimination."
"Ahem. Anybody you might--ah, know?"
Kevin grunted. "Gods, I don't know. You saw Sera. I'm screaming normalcy in eye and hair color by comparison. With all the transmutation the Regis was doing before and probably after the Ascension, there's probably any number of white-haired Solugi females around." He stopped speaking, a frightened look rising in his eyes. "Oh shit. What was her color scheme?"
"On the Battloid? Very dark gray with an orangey red."
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit."
"I take it you know her?" Ul said quietly.
Kevin swallowed heavily, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I'm afraid I do."
oooooooooooooooooooo
Somewhere else in the mall, one of its large population of feral cats crouched, green eyes intent on a piece of movement off in the shadows of an abandoned storefront. Stealthily, it moved another inch, its tabby tail twitching ever so slightly. The smell of the quarry was odd, but tempting, and the shape had mouse written all over the hunter's predator perceptions.
Food! the cat thought.
The scuffling little movements grew nearer. The twitches stopped, and the cat crouched, salt-and-pepper vibrassae trembling.
The movements came withing three feet of the animal.
The cat sprang.
In the next second, it was yowling as claws came down on nothing, and traction on the slick surface sent it caroming into the entranceway. Stunned, it lay there for a second.
Eventually, it shook its head, nothing but its pride abused. Giving a quick glance to make certain nobody or nothing had been watching, it began to hurriedly wash its head.
Behind it, there was little yelps as what looked like a ball of white lint trotted happily further into the base interior.